


i bet you didn't know (something absurd)

by blurryfaced_dreamer



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Band, First Meetings, High School AU, M/M, Oneshot, Poetry, Well duh, references to NPI
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 16:59:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7692409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blurryfaced_dreamer/pseuds/blurryfaced_dreamer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Josh and Tyler literally run into each other in the hall, and Josh takes Tyler's poetry notebook by accident.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i bet you didn't know (something absurd)

**Author's Note:**

> tis I, a humble peasant, here with yet another oneshot  
> thanks for reading! btw comments fuel my soul hint hint wink wink

Josh was convinced beyond a doubt that the clock hanging over the door of his biology classroom was rigged.

No clock could possibly go that slowly. Time just didn’t work like that. He’d looked away from the clock for maybe five minutes, but when he looked back, he swore the minute hand had actually gone _backwards._

So after fifty-two minutes of this clock being a complete piece of crap, the bell finally rang, signaling the end of the class period.

Chairs squeaked against the tile flooring as the entire class rushed to get out into the hallway, having just completed a long-awaited exam. They murmured hurriedly to their friends, rubbing at the back of their necks, which were inevitably sore from being hunched over for so long.

And Josh? Josh was long gone. That test had been the bane of his existence in the weeks leading up to it, and he didn’t want to stick around in the dreaded classroom a moment longer than he had to.

He slung his backpack over one shoulder and shoved his way to the door before the bell had even finished ringing, evoking a few “excuse you” and “wow, rude much?” comments from his classmates.

Once he was out of the classroom, he took no time in hurrying down the hall, ducking through the crowd of students on their way to their next classes (could they honestly go any slower?). This hallway especially was infamous for its crowds; it somehow always managed to fill up the instant the bell rang, making it a human pool of quicksand—once you’re in, there’s no getting out. 

Josh had navigated through this foreboding crowd before, though, and after four years at Rockwell High, you get used to the feeling of literal suffocation. 

Which was why it caught him completely off-guard when, just as he was nearing the end of the hall, his shoulder abruptly slammed into someone, and he was falling.

In most teen movies, Josh knew, it was a total cliché when the Casually Likable Average Girl dropped her books, and the Cute Handsome Jock picked them up for her. But that was always a little whoops-my-bad thing where the books just kind of tumbled out of her arms.

That was not at all what happened in this case.

The impact sent whoever he’d bumped into toppling back into the crowd — the crowd that _literally did nothing_ as both of them stumbled, then fell to the ground. And not some pretty little Casually Likable Average Girl fall. A deadass slam-the-entire-left-side-of-your-body-on-the-tile _crash_ that knocked the wind out of him.

And, of course, sent all of his books flying across the hall.

It took about half a second for the crowd to register what had happened and move on. No one helped them up, of course, Josh thought angrily, because this was high school and ‘kindness’ wasn’t on the vocabulary list.

“Oh, god, I’m so sorry,” squeaked a little voice from what seemed like the wild blue yonder of heaven to Josh, who was still sprawled out on the floor. He looked up.

A small, dark-haired guy donned in all black clothing (seriously, even his shoelaces were black) was standing over him, his hands fidgeting nervously. He extended a hand out to Josh, who shook his head dismissively, then awkwardly stumbled to his feet.

“I’m really, really sorry,” the guy repeated, his eyes wide.

Josh cracked a small smile, shaking his head again as he bent down to start collecting his books. “It’s no big deal. My bad.”

“No no no, completely my bad.” He grabbed one of his books from off the ground, stuffing it back in his backpack. “I wasn’t looking, I—”

And as if Josh’s day couldn’t get any worse, at that moment, the tardy bell rang. So much for the clocks being slow.

The two of them stood in shock for a second before immediately scrambling to get their stuff back in their bags, Josh yelling “go, go, go!” as if it were some kind of Olympic game.

“Bye!” the still-nameless guy called over his shoulder as they both dashed off in opposite directions.

 

*           *           *

 

 

“You’re late, Mr. Dun,” snarled Mrs. Dennis, his algebra teacher.

Josh hunched his shoulders and shuffled to his seat in the back of the room, muttering a quick “sorry” as he sat down. He was uncomfortably aware of the thirty-odd pairs of eyes glued to him, and made a mental note not to make small talk in the middle of the damn hallway ever again.

Mrs. Dennis pursed her lips, turning back to the chalkboard. “Don’t let it happen again.”

After ignoring the questioning murmurs of the classroom, Josh pulled out his math notebook, skimming through the pages to find the next empty one. All good. Back to normal.

Until he realized every page was full.

Confused, he flipped through the notebook again; hadn’t he just started a new notebook? What was this?

And, hey, that wasn’t his handwriting.

He stopped on a random page and quickly read through it. It looked like poetry.

 

_Here I come, come to you_

_In the very clothes_

_That I killed, killed you in_

_And now I know I'm alone_

 

Okay, yeah, Josh _definitely_ didn’t write that. It reminded him of something he might have heard once when his sister dragged him to slam poetry night at some local coffee shop. And it was beautiful, absolutely, he was jealous of whoever had written it. But how had he gotten it—?

Wait.

_Wait._

The dark-haired, small-framed guy from the hallway. In their rush to get to class, Josh must have picked up his notebook by mistake.

He resisted the urge to facepalm right then and there, and instead resolved to mentally screaming that this day _literally could not get any worse._

“Mr. Dun?”

Josh blinked, snapping up to look at his teacher. “Yeah?”

“Don’t ‘yeah’ me,” she scolded. Sometimes she reminded Josh of a schoolteacher from the 1800s or something. “I asked you what your answer was for number four.”

Well, once again, Josh stood corrected; this day just kept getting worse by the second.

“N-number four?” he stammered. Giggles from the class. Great.

“On the homework,” she urged.

“Oh. The homework. Right.” Josh desperately flipped through the notebook once more — maybe the guy had written a poem on concepts of number systems. No such luck. “Uh…well, you see…”

Mrs. Dennis narrowed her eyes and huffed across the classroom to Josh’s desk. “May I see your notebook, please?”

Oh, god.

“No — I mean, I mean it isn’t mine, it’s—”

“Sure, of course,” she sneered, leafing through the pages. “Let’s see: ‘Taking time in a simple place / In my bed where my head rests on a pillowcase / And it's said that a war's led but I forget / That I let another day go by.’ ” Her expression softened. “Did you write this?”

“No, I—” He toyed with the hem of his shirt nervously. “I’m really sorry, I’ll get the work to you tomorrow. I promise.” 

She hesitated for a moment, her eyes skimming the page once again, and then tossed the book back on Josh’s desk.

“I expect it on my desk, 8 AM sharp.”

“O-of course,” he nodded, letting out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

 

*           *           *

 

Josh spent the rest of the period silently sorting through the books crammed in his bag. He’d discovered a few things: the guy’s name was Tyler (it was written on the inside of several of his textbooks), he was in band (viola, first chair), and he was an _incredible_ poet. The stuff was scribbled everywhere—little stanzas jotted down in the corners of random pages, as if he’d been struck by an idea and just _had_ to write it down.

When the lunch bell rang, Josh quickly made his way to the cafeteria, hoping to catch Tyler. He stood in the doorway, scanning the room, and his eyes fell on a familiar head of dark hair sitting alone in the corner.

“Tyler!” he called out, hurrying across the lunchroom, waving frantically. “Hey, Tyler!”

Tyler turned, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion, then waved back tentatively when he recognized Josh. “Uh…hey!”

“Hey,” Josh grinned, shrugging off his backpack and setting it down on the bench. “I’m gonna take a wild guess here and say you didn’t have your homework for your last class.”

Tyler laughed. “I got lucky, actually, I did. But I _was_ a little confused when I saw ‘Josh Dun is Josh Fun’ written in hot pink sharpie on what I thought was my poetry book.”

Josh snorted. “Yeah, that’s a long story.” He sat down next to Tyler, fishing through his backpack. “By the way, your poetry’s amazing.”

Tyler’s eyes widened and the smile vanished from his face. “You read my stuff?”

“Uh — I read one thing,” he admitted. “A-and then my math teacher read something else. Something about a pillowcase.”

“Blasphemy,” Tyler muttered, his voice almost nonexistent. He looked like he’d seen a ghost. “Your math teacher…read Blasphemy.”

“But it was good!” Josh assured him hastily. “Really, I mean, I wasn’t sitting there like, ‘wow, what a nerd.’ It was good. Good nerdy stuff.”

Tyler took a deep breath, nodding to himself. “It’s not the laughing I’m worried about.”

“What is it, then?”

“That’s a long story.”

Josh looked Tyler dead in the eye, smiling slightly. “I’ve got time.”

Maybe this wouldn't be the worst day, after all.


End file.
